Freed
hostages leave StanstedSTANSTED
(England), Feb 13  The hostages freed from an
Afghan airliner left yesterday the British airport where
they had been held for four days at gunpoint by hijackers
who threatened to kill them.

LAHORE:
Women Action Forum demonstrators stage a rally against
Islamic law, demanded by Pakistan's religious clerics, in
Lahore on Saturday. There is a growing pressure on the
Pakistan government to implement Islamic laws. 
AP/PTI

Wiranto
to stay onJAKARTA,
Feb 13  Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid
apparently climbed down in a two-week battle of wills
with former military chief Gen Wiranto today, allowing
him to keep his Cabinet job  at least for now.

Hizbollah
vows strikes against IsraelBEIRUT, Feb
13  Hizbollah has said it will continue attacking
Israeli troops in south Lebanon even if Israel carried
out its threat to bomb more civilian targets.

Pinochet fine, says policeLONDON, Feb
13  Reports that the health of former Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet has deteriorated markedly over
the past week were discounted today by the police, who
insisted that the General was still under arrest in his
suburban mansion.

Blame
violent streak on genesCHICAGO,
Feb 13  Researchers have identified a genetic flaw
in violent antisocial men, bolstering the theory that
criminal behaviour may be determined by genetics as much
as environment.

Largest-ever
mass wedding via netSEOUL, Feb
13  About 450,000 couples were today married in a
mass ceremony connected by the Internet and satellite and
officiated by Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myung
Moon, church officials said.

Dont
execute Bahais: ClintonWASHINGTON,
Feb 13  President Bill Clinton urged Iran not to
execute three members of the Bahai faith, the White
House said, adding it believed the men were tried solely
because of their religious beliefs.

STANSTED (England), Feb
13 (Reuters)  The hostages freed from an Afghan
airliner left yesterday the British airport where they
had been held for four days at gunpoint by hijackers who
threatened to kill them.

Afghanistans
ruling Taliban movement pledged safe conduct for them on
return  but only 37 of the 142 freed hostages have
said they want to go back home.

The hostages were driven
away in a convoy of coaches from Stansted airport near
London to a holding centre in western England where
Immigration officials will decide their fate.

Human rights activists
have urged British Home Secretary (Interior Minister)
Jack Straw not to deport those wanting to stay in Britain
after their gruelling ordeal.

Twenty-two persons
arrested after the hijack ended peacefully on Thursday
are still being questioned by the police. They are
expected to appear in court early next week to be charged
under the Britains Prevention of Terrorism Act.

LONDON (AFP): Britain
denied reports today that it wanted to return hostages
freed from a hijacked Afghan plane to a third country
such as Pakistan.

However the Foreign
Office admitted London had been in contact with several
countries near Afghanistan over the hijacking.

So far, at least 74 of
the 164 aboard the plane when it landed at Stansted early
Monday, after its hijacking a day earlier, have requested
asylum here, posing a headache for Britain which does not
want to be seen as a soft touch.

A Foreign Office
spokeswoman said Britain had indeed been holding talks
with countries near Afghanistan about various
aspects of the hijacking. However she denied
Pakistan had been approached specifically because of its
Afghan community with a view to sending all freed
hostages there.

The Taliban will
not persecute or harm them, Civil Aviation Minister
Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor told reporters in Kandahar,
southern Afghanistan, where a chartered plane is expected
to bring back dozens of the freed hostages from Stansted
airport, near London. British officials said 74 of the
150 hostages had applied to stay in Britain.

JAKARTA, Feb 13
(Reuters)  Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid
apparently climbed down in a two-week battle of wills
with former military chief Gen Wiranto today, allowing
him to keep his Cabinet job  at least for now.

Gen Wiranto, who has
repeatedly rejected Mr Wahids demands to resign,
will remain in the Cabinet until a special probe last
years violence in East Timor is complete, a
government official said.

His statement
contradicted the Presidents comments yesterday that
Gen Wiranto would be removed from the Cabinet if he
persisted in his refusal to resign.

Mr Simanjuntak said Mr
Wahid had not changed his opinion that Gen Wiranto should
resign.

But following a
three-hour meeting between Mr Wahid, Gen. Wiranto,
Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Attorney-General
Marzuki Darusman, it appeared a compromise may have been
reached allowing Gen Wiranto to stay in the Cabinet for
now.

There is an
agreement that there will be an opportunity for the
Attorney-General to conduct a deep investigation and the
Attorney-General will form a team to investigate,
Mr Simanjuntak said.

The result will be
reported to the President, on whether Gen Wiranto should
be brought to court.

Mr Wahid, who returned
from a 16-day foreign trip in the early hours of today,
has repeatedly told Gen Wiranto to resign after an
official Indonesian inquiry implicated him in the
violence that ravaged East Timor last year.

BEIRUT, Feb 13 (Reuters)
 Hizbollah has said it will continue attacking
Israeli troops in south Lebanon even if Israel carried
out its threat to bomb more civilian targets.

The bombing of the
infrastructure in Lebanon will not protect the occupation
soldiers rather, it will subject them to further painful
blows and operations, Hizbollahs leader
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said yesterday.

Continuation of
the Islamic resistance operations is not an issue for
bargaining or threat, no matter what the price. These
operations will continue unabated until the enemy is
defeated and forced to withdraw unconditionally from
Lebanon, Nasrallah was quoted as saying on
Hizbollah radio.

Despite Hizbollahs
uncompromising stance, fighting died down after Israeli
forces and their South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia allies
shelled hills near the eastern edge of Israels
occupation zone during the morning.

Hizbollah claimed
responsibility for a brief shelling attack on an Israeli
radar position in the western sector of the 15-km
(nine-mile) deep zone.

Israels chief of
staff Danny Yatom, a top security adviser to Prime
Minister Ehud Barak, repeated on Saturday Israels
pledge to leave Lebanon this year. We are leaving,
we will go out of Lebanon not later than July 2000,
period, he said on Israeli television.

Mr Barak has said the
withdrawal will be in the context of a peace agreement,
but with peace talks now frozen he has not said how a
withdrawal would take place if Syria and Lebanon remained
in a state of war with Israel.

BAGHDAD (AFP):
An official Iraqi newspaper yesterday called for a
jihad to defend Lebanon against Israels
attacks over the past week and said Arab governments had
been put to shame.

There is no other
way but to declare jihad because the Zionist
enemy thinks Arabs do not need electricity or to send
their children to school, said Al-Iraq, referring
to Israels air strikes on Lebanons
infrastructure.

LONDON, Feb 13 (AFP)
 Reports that the health of former Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet has deteriorated markedly over the past
week were discounted today by the police, who insisted
that the General was still under arrest in his suburban
mansion.

He is fine, he is
well. He had not been taken to the hospital, a
police spokeswoman told AFP today.

Retired Gen Luis Cortes
Villa, who heads the Chile-based Pinochet Foundation, had
earlier prompted intense speculation that the 84-year-old
General might be nearing death after he told a press
conference in Santiago yesterday that the former dictator
was depressed.

We fear that
anything could happen, Gen Cortes Villa added.

General Pinochets
leukaemia condition has seriously worsened, doctors
reportedly told one of his sons, Mr Marco Antonio
Pinochet. Gen Cortes Villa said the Generals close
relatives would travel to London within hours.

The separatist rebels,
who have announced plans to switch from frontal
resistance to their former strategy of hit-and-run
attack, struck a key Russian military base in Chechnya
outside the capital, Grozny.

Interfax quoted the
Russian regional command as saying that bombers and
fighter-bombers made more than 100 sorties in the past 24
hours, in the Vendeno and Argun river gorges. It said 18
rebel strongholds, two communication points and several
smaller positions had been destroyed.

The Russian military say
their troops have sealed off the two gorges, where up to
8,000 rebels are believed to be holed up, and have
already seized the heights commanding the gorges. But
they have not yet moved troops into the area to seize
control.

Russia is trying to
defeat large groups of rebels in the mountains before the
snow melts in the spring, making it easier for the rebels
to manoeuvre. But the military admits it could take it
some time to overcome the smaller rebel groups.

SEOUL, Feb 13 (Reuters)
 About 450,000 couples were today married in a mass
ceremony connected by the Internet and satellite and
officiated by Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myung
Moon, church officials said.

About 30,000 of the
couples  some of whom had only just met  took
part in a live ceremony on an overcast Sunday at Chamsil
Stadium in Seoul.

Yes, weve
just met here in the stadium for the first time,
said Mr Shino Hamashima, 29, of Japan, on the arm of her
smiling husband, Mr Nejh Taner, 31, who flew from Turkey.

I am so
happy, she said, shaking with excitement, and due
to the chilly winter air.

A church spokesman said
the Chamsil Stadium ceremony wedded 10,000 couples while
20,000 married couples rededicated their marriage vows to
each other.

They were joined via
satellite and the Internet by 420,000 more couples from
around the globe, including North Korea, in what was said
to be the largest-ever mass wedding, the spokesman said.

At the stadium, Rev Moon
and his wife blessed the identically dressed couples with
more than 150,000 well-wishers and viewers watching.

WASHINGTON, Feb 13
(Reuters)  President Bill Clinton urged Iran not to
execute three members of the Bahai faith, the White
House said, adding it believed the men were tried solely
because of their religious beliefs.

The White House
yesterday said Mr Clinton was deeply
troubled by death sentences that were
reaffirmed on Sirus Zabihi-Moghaddam and Hedayet
Kashefi-Najafabadi and by a new death sentence imposed on
Manuchehr Khulusi.

The first two men were
arrested in 1997 for violating a ban on religious
gatherings while the third has never had formal charges
brought against him, according to National Spiritual
Association of Bahais spokeswoman Kit Cosby.

President
Clinton continues to hold the Iranian Government
responsible for the safety of the Bahai community of Iran
and strongly urges that these executions not be carried
out, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said
in a statement.

WORLD BRIEFS

Reformist
daily resumes publicationTEHRAN:
A newspaper returned to news-stands on Saturday
after a self-imposed weeklong suspension meant to calm
anger generated by its political cartoons satirising a
cleric. Azad newspaper published cartoons last month that
depicted hard-line cleric Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi as a
crocodile and a fat thug, sparking three days of
protests. The reformist newspaper apologised, saying the
cartoons were not intended to be offensive.  AP

USA tests
futuristic mini satellitesLOS
ANGELES: Two miniature satellites, not much
bigger than cellular phones and using the same wireless
technologies, have paved the way for the future of
communications, scientists said. The satellites, the
smallest ever to be sent into space, are known as
Picosats. They were launched on
January 26 and weighed less than one half pound,
measuring just four inches by three inches by one inch.
 Reuters

Elizabeth Taylor
wins awardPHILADELPHIA:
Elizabeth Taylor will be the third recipient of
Marian Anderson Award, which honours artists who work to
benefit humanity. Taylor was chosen because of her work
on behalf of AIDS awareness, research and patient care,
Mayor John F. Street said on Friday. This
quintessential movie star took the spotlight, which has
illuminated her acting career throughout her life, and
bravely turned it on the battle against AIDS following
the death of her close friend Rock Hudson,
Street said.  AP

Russian Proton-K
rocket launchedMOSCOW:
Russian Proton-K rocket lifted off on Saturday
from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the first launch since
Kazakstan lifted a ban on Proton rockets imposed after a
Russian booster crashed in October. The rocket
successfully carried an Indonesian Garuda-1 commercial
communications satellite into orbit, the Russian
Strategic Rocket Forces press service said.  AP

Bdesh plea
to US PresidentWASHINGTON:
Bangladesh has urged the USA President Bill
Clinton, who is visiting the country on March 25, to stay
on for two days to join its Independence Day
celebrations, The Washington Times reported quoting
unidentified sources. The American side, the sources
said, has cited lack of suitable accommodation for the
Presidents huge entourage, including the White
House media corps, which needs at least a 1,000 rooms, as
the reason why Mr Clinton cannot stay overnight in
Bangladesh.  PTI

Frances
first woman test pilot deadPARIS:
Jacqueline Auriol, Frances first woman
test pilot who set several world aviation speed records
in the 1950s and 1960s, has died, her family said on
Saturday. She was 82. Auriol, the daughter-in-law of
former French President Vincent Auriol, doggedly pursued
her passion and obtained a flying licence despite being a
passenger in a 1949 plane crash after which she required
several operations.  AP